NEW ZEALAND – ICE SPIRE

One of any glacier’s most unique and remarkable structures are it’s seracs and Fox Glacier was and is no exception. Its crevasse and serac field is littered with unique and unusual ice formations. This natural ice spire caught my eye as we skimmed over the glacier in the small mountain helicopter. I focused my attention on it trying to capture it from just the right angle to show its precarious stance and unusual flutings. These ice formations are often very unstable and dangerous. Pound for pound glacial ice weighs about the same as concrete so these formations are really only accessible safely for photography by helicopter. I photographed this with a 24mm wide angle lens to capture enough surrounding ice to keep the spire in context. The sense of scale gets somewhat lost in a small jpeg – but you could have driven a semi-trailer through the ice cave with ease.